


And a Hard Place

by sparklyfaerie



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklyfaerie/pseuds/sparklyfaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Either way, she loses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And a Hard Place

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or anything associated with it. All rights to Doctor Who and affiliated products belong to the BBC and the other proper entities.

Over the course of her extended life, River Song has been presented with some truly terrible choices. Time and again, she's had to shut herself down almost completely and get on with what is right, or what is best for the people involved. She tries not to think of these choices, and for the most part, is able to put them to the back of her mind. Due to the life she's led, she's developed something of a capacity for making impossible choices.

Murder the man she loves or destroy the Universe.

Cause her own parents unmeasurable heartache or change everything about who she is.

See the man she loves die  _again_ , this time without even a hint of knowing affection in his eyes, or watch the Universe literally collapse around them.

Allow her mother to follow her father to a place where she would never be able to follow, or force her mother to stay and be miserable for the rest of her life without him.

So she isn't exactly surprised when she is presented with another terrible, soul-crushing choice during the Doctor's first ever encounter with her. She tries to laugh as she imagines how it must have coloured his perception of her—it makes sense now that he was never as concerned for her as he was for his human friends. She simply thought that he trusted her to look out for herself—and perhaps that was also a part of it. But he had seen her end; their parting wasn't some huge unknown for him, like her parents' (or any of the friends he'd had before her) had been.

He hates endings, but perhaps the fact that their ending is also their beginning would eventually give him some solace.

It is fitting, for them; the bad going hand-in-hand with the wonderful.

So she wires the headpiece, listening to the faint breathing of the man (her lover. Her friend.  _A stranger_ ) on the floor in front of her. Her fingers are adept with the small wires, skilled from spending quiet nights working under the TARDIS console with the man who loved her. With the man who looked at her as if she were a newborn star.

She squashes down the lump in her throat and refuses to cry as his face, the face she knows and loves best, comes to mind. " _It is what it is,_ " she'd told him countless times when he was younger, shortly after learning her identity. " _I wouldn't change a single thing about myself, and you know it. Now stop asking, or I'm going to think you_ want _me to be different._ "

"It is what it is." She mutters, to herself this time, ignoring the slight trembling of her hands. She's not afraid of death. She's died twice, already—this is just… more permanent. But the actual pain of death, feeling the body slow and begin to decay—she's felt that. This wont be anything new.

Her heart rate quickens as she hears the Doctor's breathing begin to change. Any moment now, he'll start to stir. Funny, how her heart seems to insist on reminding her that she's alive, when she intends to change that in a matter of minutes; how she can feel the blood race through her body as her adrenaline begins to pump, gearing up for survival.

Because, once again, she's presented with another impossible choice: She could ensure her own existence and die in his place, or she could allow him to sit in this chair and erase herself from history completely.

In the end, it isn't really a choice at all.

Either way, she loses.


End file.
